Language is going to be the problem here. I will attempt to be as clear and concise as I can. Yet, you will find in this essay ideas presented in terms either totally unfamiliar, or presented in familiar terms which are intended here to carry alternate meanings which may seem occluded. For this I must apologize in advance. 

Art on this page is by Alex Grey

The Three Selves:

For the purposes of this discussion, it is helpful first to divide the whole person into three interpenetrating selves so we can understand the nature of each self and come to predict their interactions. The purpose of understanding these natural interactions is to use them on behalf of your community for healing or teaching. Any other use will be, at best, in vain and, at worst, a disaster.

The three selves live in three interpenetrating worlds: the upper world which is the causal realm of light and archetypes, the middle world which is the world of experience in which we live, and the lower world, a realm within matter, in which the truth of the manifest world may be found. In the upper world we live as the amakuana or high self, also called the spirit or the causal self. In the lower world we live in our body: our mineral body, our physical body, our temple, our pet. In the middle world, we live in the ego or the I. It is the soul made up of structures in our thoughts and feelings which we feed with attention and habit.

The following are my loving thoughts on the nature of each self:

The Animal

Please do not infer by this name that animals (or plants or rocks) are found solely in the lower world, for, in fact, any manifest creation originates in the spirit, and can only have manifest through the realm of soul and is therefor having an experience. The mountains are busy being mountains and the trees are being a forest and the clouds are being clouds. It should then seem simple to understand what is meant by the title cloud beings or mountain spirit or the deva of the wood; but I digress.

Your animal is like your dog (or your cat or bird or snake or fish or guinea pig- it’s your pet.) You are expected to walk it, feed it, pick up after it, hydrate it, get it some quality rest and relaxation, and then feed it again. Anyone who has had a pet understands this aspect of the physical care and feeding of their dog, or body. It contains cells, tissues, organs, and systems, and is complex, beautiful, and miraculous. It is your best friend, your locker at school, or the only car you will ever drive. It is sacred, holy, special, and unique, and everyone has one.

Unlike your dog, the body is unconscious. Your body is your unconscious mind, and like your spirit, it is implicitly communal, unified and whole.

Also included in this body is a host of electrical impulses and chemical interactions, which are often referred to as the etheric and astral bodies, respectively.

The Mob of I:

The soul is a compilation of your feelings, thoughts and effects (not deeds, which belong to the physical realm).

While in the physical world we are individual and in the spirit we are one, in the soul we more resemble a mob of often competing entities called soul parts. Whenever I or anyone engages in a habitual activity, practicing the same thought and feeling over and over, we, over time, construct the framework for this soul part. More core parts lie close to the body, while others live out in the realms of the aura. A classic core soul part is speech, which is only shaken loose in extreme trauma. A sadly common soul part is related to smoking cigarettes. This soul part requires energy to sustain itself and therefore attempts to force one to smoke for it. 

Not all soul parts belong to us. We can take on the thoughts and feelings of others easily. They tend to pass in family lines, like alcoholism.

When all of the soul parts are acting to one common aim, the parts act together as a whole and the person experiences a wholeness of being. The proper intent for the unification of soul parts is the spirit world. When one directs all their soul toward spiritual matters, one is made whole.

The conscious self is capable of communicating with the high self, only by means of the body, which is directly related to the spirit by being its opposite. When the ego judges its own behavior as wrong, it limits contact with the spirit through shame.  This can become so severe that one no longer contacts spirit even in the dream life. Fasting and forgiveness heal the rift, and contact can be made once more. 

The Causal Self:

Spirit is one unified field of information interacting with itself in a fractaline way so as to create order from chaos or visa versa. There is only one spirit and all things everywhere and everywhen share it. It is, has been, and will be everything. It can and must do everything before it has completed a single cycle of self interaction. 

Everything which is not matter is spirit, and everything which is not spirit is matter, and yet, matter is never without spirit and spirit is never without matter.

The spirit of a human is comprised of their effects in the soul world, their appearance or enlightenment, and their archetypal self which guides them. This spirit self, the perfectly trustworthy parental high self (as it is translated from the Hawaiian), is all knowing and all seeing, and is the being through which listening to the soul crystalizes our future ahead of us.  If we understand this mechanism, it is possible to change one’s future by feeding the spirit on the correct soul foods like devotion and prayer.

The Seven Bodies:

There are seven secret spiritual organs often called chakras. Each is related to a specific gland in the body and a specific hormone it produces, as well as a specific planet in the solar system which rules its nature. Two of the seven are special because they have a presence in two worlds at once; the third chakra lives in the physical world as chemicals and in the soul world as feelings, and the fifth chakra lives in the soul world as effect and in the spirit world as cause.

Each chakra is related to a realm of the three worlds and is the center of a body which resides in that landscape. Each is interpenetrating, with matter being the coarsest, spirit the finest, and the rest taking place in the 99% space between atoms. It can also be said that the chakras function as vortices of various energies, and have positive and negative polarity from front to back, resulting in a feminine, curved or emotional appearance in the front and a straight, masculine, and mental appearance from behind.

In the following descriptions I include a sentence pertaining to medicine appropriate to that body.  It may seem obvious once I have said it, but a mind cure like talk therapy will not heal emotional body traumas any more than a physical massage can treat mind body infirmities.  I have also tried to hint at instructions for recognizing and clearing blockages from each chakra for the fuller health of all seven bodies.

1. The Material Body: Crystal of Consciousness

Much is known about the physical body and its structures, including the skeleton, the circulatory system, the respiratory system, the digestive system, and the nervous system, etc, and ends at the skin.  The bones themselves are made from a crystal called apatite, and all of the body’s tissues are ordered in uniform crystalline arrangements.  DNA itself folds down into a crystalline structure.  Much may be said about the esoteric nature of the physical body, however let us here simply suggest that it is in direct relationship with the spirit self by means of being its reflection.

The first chakra is red in color and has a four fold nature, relating, as is does, to the earth and the four directions. It is located at the base of the spine and its concern is survival, but can be blocked by fear. To open this chakra we must surrender our fears. The glands associated are the adrenals, which produce adrenaline, which makes us feel afraid. The impulse to violence can be cleared at this chakra.

The physical body is given to us at birth and must be mastered by the age of seven or developmental delays may ensue. This body is also related to the interactions of the moon and the earth, which experience a four-phase monthly cycle in relation to the sun. Herbal medicine and various forms of massage and vibration can be very helpful in treating the physical body. For purposes of psychic reading, the first chakra can be looked at as a house or structure.

2. The Body Electric: the Living Force

We have all picked up a piece of fruit or a vegetable that just doesn’t seem lively; either it doesn’t smell right, is limp, lusterless, or the color is faded. These are all signs of a lack of energy.

Call it chi, prana, ether, life force or electricity, but we are talking about the juice, the thing that separates the living from the dead, the fifth element- plasma. The raw form of it is lightning. In the body it travels in channels, known as meridians or nadis, and collects in three places called the triple burner or three elixir fields. The first “burner” is in the second chakra, called the lower dan tien or sea of chi, where it is used to power the physical body.  The second burner in the heart uses the chi to generate the magnetic fields of the mind, and the high self uses the third in the head to send and receive messages in light and is exists as a reflection of the third eye in the sixth chakra.

The human etheric body extends about two inches from the skin, at which distance is is possible to feel the energy of another. It is also worth mentioning that the etheric body nearly always expresses the opposite gender from the physical body.

The second chakra deals with pleasure and is blocked by guilt.  Forgiveness is the way to open this chakra.  It is located just below the navel and is orange in color.  It relates to sex, money, and all forms of energy, and has a six fold appearance.  The glands are the testis or ovaries and the hormones are testosterone and estrogen which make us feel male or female.  For the purposes of psychic reading, it may be seen as a room or interior space.

We inherit this body at the age of 7 from out parents, who were our sole source of energy aside from food until now.  It must be mastered by the age of 14 or the pressure of emotional transformation may overwhelm the etheric circuitry and cause a “melt down”.  It can be healed with herbs and acupuncture. Breathing exercises and eating raw foods are also most helpful. Both sacred sex or payment for right livelihood feed this chakra. 

3. Emotional Body: Better Living through Chemistry

The key feature of this body is the channel of communication between the physical body and the soul body.  Chemistry is our physical body’s way of communicating vibrationally with the soul plain.  Our feelings are the soul’s attempt to communicate on the physical plain. 

Hormones and neurotransmitters travel through the nervous and lymphatic systems at astonishing rates.  When you touch something you feel it- like you feel sadness.  You don’t actually feel it, but your experience of it.  In the physical world this is chemistry, but in the soul world it is the realm of feelings, and is directly linked to the vibrational plain in the fifth chakra, by virtue of being its reflection.

We are emotional beings in a an emotional landscape, encountering emotional entities which may or may not affect us.  This third chakra is yellow in color and has a ten fold appearance.  It is located in the solar plexus and is associated with the pancreas, which produces insulin, which is the experience of sweetness and suffering.  It deals with will and may be blocked by shame, yet opens with self acceptance.

It is worth pointing out that all emotions interfere with human life, stemming as they all do from the same entity known as fear.  Greed is the fear of scarcity, anxiety is the fear of the future, hatred is the fear of self recognition. Even anger is only a fermented form of sadness, and sadness is only fear of loss.  On the other hand, love is not an emotion. Love is a divine birthright which flows from the earth, which is the source of love, into the human through the first chakra.  Likewise, joy, which originates in the sun, is filtered into the body by the crown chakra.  It is possible to combine the two in the heart center to produce the elixir of bliss, which is a precursor to human immortality.

Flower essences, homeopathy and aromatherapy are very useful in treating this body, as well as hypnosis, which works on the emotions by way of the thoughts.  For the purposes of psychic reading, it may be seen as an animal.

The physical organs associated with this last physical body are the glands themselves, which produce the emotional chemicals and the chakras related to them.  The hormones travel out of the body and arrange themselves in a sort of cloud called the aura, approximately six feet across.  It can also be referred to as the smell body because you can sense when you’re in someone’s space by their cloud of scent.  This body is thrust upon us at age 14 with puberty and adult hormones and must be mastered by age 21 or the inheritance of a mental body will wreck emotional havoc if it unsupported.

4. The Mind Body: the Magnetic Fields, Mirror of the Universe

While the other bodies mirror one another, the mind stands alone as unique. Because of this, it is the seat of the I or ego, the place from which we source our unique experience of self.  It is in fact a mirror of the universe and, if it is cleaned through discipline and meditation, much may be seen in its surface.  

We live as thought beings in a thought universe, ripples on the magnetic record of time.  Thoughts can encode in objects or spaces, or become attached to feelings and experiences.  Ideas may be shared openly and virally.  In scientific terms, we call these self contained ideas “memes” and the field of study is memetics. They are egrigores.

The fourth chakra is centered in the heart and is green in color- although it will appear pink, the realm of direct reflection is green in spirit.  It deals with love and is blocked by grief.  It opens through compassion of thought, word and deed. Its gland is the thymus which regulates the immune system- what we accept and deny in our bodies. It relates to both the sun and the cosmos through its twelve-fold nature.  Its appearance in the aura is like wings, though its actual structure is double toroidal, like an infinite doughnut-shaped field about eight feet across. It can be read by an ECG at nine feet away.  This field is produced in the heart by the rapid vortation of the iron in blood under the influence of the electricity in the pericardial nodes, which makes an infinity symbol in bio-current.  The field is like a LP record in that it records all electro-magnetic disturbances in grooves in the circulation mind body field.  When the grooves pass through the heart again, the thoughts repeat.  The more they are recorded, the more the play out.  (Incidentally, the earth has an identical field, with similar recording capacity and is often referred to as the Akashic Record or the cosmic memory of earth.)

The mind body can be healed directly with love or through hypnotherapy and, to a lesser extent, psychoanalysis or counseling.  For the purposes of reading, the heart is seen as a garden or landscape.

We inherit the mind body at age 21 and, if we are not emotionally stable, it will cause much soul pain and searching.  It must be mastered by the age of 28 or we will not have control over our created and perceived realities.

5. The Vibrational Body: Storied Influence

In the soul, the fifth body is the story, while in the spirit world, it is your song. Its relationship to the two worlds is one of cause and effect. (Cause in the spiritual world- effect in the soul planes.) Because the vibrational body exists in both the soul and spirit realms, is it the channel of communication between the spirit world and the soul plain. Our affect on the world is spirit showing us what we create. It is related to sound and vibration. Through it we manifest intention.  It is one of two creative organs (like its reflection in the third chakra), is located at the throat, and is blue in color.  It deals with truth and is blocked by lies, especially lies we tell ourselves. It opens when we see ourselves for who we are.

The fifth chakra has a sixteen-fold nature and can be healed by walking the eight fold path: right understanding, right speech, right livelihood, right concentration, right mindfulness, right effort, right action, and right intention.  Its related gland is the thyroid, whose hormones regulate metabolism (like frequency).  It is healed by making and receiving stories and songs.  Anything you can hear is your sound body; it includes anywhere from which your effect may be felt.  

We inherit this body with our Saturn return at age 28 and are driven to find our life’s purpose.  If we have not cultivated the mind, we may find ourselves lost and unable to manifest our intentions.  In other words, if we keep on doing what we’ve been doing, we will end up where we are going.  When we change the way we tell the story of our life, the sound track changes, and so does the ending.

6. The Light Body: Visionary Enlightenment 

The human light body arranges itself in a series of interlocking, counterrotating geometries, beginning with the platonic solids in their dual arrangements.  The torsion field which separates the aura and the magnetic torus of the heart is in the form of a star tetrahedron approximately human height in diameter. It is then encased in a cube-octahedron at approximately eighteen feet, and then layered with the master mirror, the icosa-dodecahedron, at around thirty-two feet in distance. 

Everything which you perceive is light in some form, and light is the carrier of information: the cosmic currency.  In fact, even DNA emits and receives bio-photons in the visible spectrum.  The light body is anything you can see. Any light with which you interact is your light field, all the way out to the stars.  It has a twenty-four-fold nature with a dual nature predominating.  It is the seat of judgment and discrimination and is related to Jupiter. It is found in the forehead and exists in an brilliant indigo plain of being. The sixth chakra deals with insight and is blocked by illusion.  The third eye, as it is called, opens when we understand that everything is connected. 

The light body is associated with the pituitary gland which is comprised of optic tissue directed to look inward to the brain and downward to the heart.  It produces melatonin, which relates to rest and restoration, but only produces it in total darkness.  For the purposes of reading, we look at it as a pond or body of water.  Mastery of this body produces an organ which appears as a horn from the center of the head which is actually a vortex of light and information relating from the third eye to the spiritual self.  

We acquire our light body at age 35, but so rarely has one mastered the causal self in our society that the full inheritance of it is often delayed.  In this time we may “see” the consequences of our actions and seek to better know our roots and causes.  The light body can be healed by sunlight, starlight, and periods of complete darkness. 

7. The Conceptual Self: Archetype of the Spirit

We now enter a realm of concepts (not thoughts) beyond light.  It is one with the mind of god.   The spirit self is related to the pineal gland and its hormone is DMT, which produces vivid hallucinations at birth, death, and in extreme trauma and initiation.  The crown chakra appears as a star of light hovering over each person, above the head, and has an infinite nature.  It is possible to inherit control of this body by the age of 42 but is more commonly seen the 50s.  If one has not mastered the preceding bodies, then one’s fears carried over through successive cracks in the various bodies will take shape and manifest in the body as disease. 

The spirit self cannot be ill or healed but can heal the other selves by means of transcendent and transpersonal experiences ranging from drumming and dancing, the use of hallucinogens and dream states, the practices of fire walking, and body manipulations.  Non-attachment is the crowning achievement of this organ which deals with pure cosmic energy.  For the purposes of psychic reading, it may bee seen as a fountain, or sometimes fireworks.